Trump’s advisers are attacking judges for daring to “control” him. The president wants the one objecting to his deportation plans to be “IMPEACHED!!!”
During the past two months of Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s power grabs, it has been clear the second Trump administration is building up to a confrontation with the American courts system — one that would trigger a full-blown constitutional crisis. That moment of truth has arrived.
On Friday, hours after Trump said it “should be illegal” to criticize judges, the Trump administration flew several planes with hundreds of Venezuelan migrants to deport them, apparently without due process, to a mega prison in El Salvador — despite a federal judge ordering them not to do so, and to turn around any planes en route if necessary. Trump officials ignored the judge’s order before trying to get him removed from the case. They refused to answer any of the judge’s questions on Monday, while asserting that his court had no jurisdiction once the planes were over international waters.
By Monday evening, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt was on Fox News arguing that judges cannot be allowed to “determine the way in which the president handles foreign relations.” Attorney General Pam Bondi accused the judge of “attempting to meddle in national security and foreign affairs,” adding: “This one federal judge thinks he can control foreign policy for the entire country and he cannot.” Bondi confirmed the administration “absolutely” could keep deporting Venezuelan migrants to El Salvador using the same justification.
Trump, for his part, has called the judge a “Radical Left Lunatic” who “was not elected President,” and is demanding the judge’s impeachment. “This judge, like many of the Crooked Judges’ I am forced to appear before, should be IMPEACHED!!!” Trump posted on Truth Social Tuesday morning. “WE DON’T WANT VICIOUS, VIOLENT, AND DEMENTED CRIMINALS, MANY OF THEM DERANGED MURDERERS, IN OUR COUNTRY.”
This isn’t the first time that Trump and his top brass suggested they don’t have to follow court orders. Vice President J.D. Vance wrote last month, “Judges aren’t allowed to control the executive’s legitimate power.” After a different judge ordered the Trump administration to hire back some of the thousands of probationary federal employees he and his billionaire adviser Elon Musk fired without basis, Bondi complained, “You got one district judge thinking he can control the money for the entire country.” When Trump was asked about whether his administration would comply with that court order, he replied, “I don’t think that’s going to be happening.”
Editor’s picks
But Trump’s refusal to heed the judge’s demand not to deport migrants to El Salvador — as well as the president’s decision to ship migrants, who have not been convicted of anything, to a country and prison notorious for civil rights abuses — is a huge escalation, and an alarmingly direct test of the U.S. Constitution and America’s system of checks and balances. To justify the decision, Trump invoked the infamous Alien Enemies Act of 1798 — a major stretch, given the law is meant to target the actions of foreign governments during wartime — though the Justice Department’s lawyer argued some of the migrants sent to El Salvador were deported under different authorities.
In the years leading up to his second presidency, Trump and key lieutenants plotted the highly convoluted, bad-faith methods in which a new administration would invoke the Alien Enemies Act in a way they hoped would ultimately stand up in court, and in front of the Supreme Court. During his post-presidency, Trump would privately admit this wasn’t just about “gang members”; it was about twisting the archaic wartime law to get rid of everyone he could possibly get away with expelling from the nation.
Amid the controversy Monday over the deportation flights, senior officials across the Trump administration proudly flocked to social media and live television to insist that Trump and his team cannot be reined in by judges. Trump’s “border czar” Tom Homan said outright on Fox News: “I don’t care what the judges think.” Stephen Miller, Trump’s deputy chief of staff, proclaimed that the judge’s “order is patently unlawful.”
Related Content
One senior Trump administration official says the White House’s overarching approach on these matters is to, quite simply, “move fast” — both because they expect courts to try to quickly order them to stop, and if a judge does so, moving quickly allows Team Trump to execute certain actions before the law and oversight can catch up to them. That is, apparently, exactly what occurred with the deportation flights to El Salvador.
Multiple Trump officials also tell Rolling Stone that they see, in this case and others, a difference between defying a federal judge’s order and ignoring an order.
Another close Trump adviser simply says that the president’s ultimate leverage against certain judges who try to stand in the way of his agenda is that the judiciary does not command an army, while the president of the United States does. “Are they going to come and arrest him?” the adviser asked, rhetorically.
This would all be bad enough if it were a wildly lawless but isolated incident. But it isn’t. It fits a broader fact pattern of the restored President Trump, whose administration is now operating on the legal principle of: “What are you gonna do about it?”
Last week, Rolling Stone reported that the Trump administration had continued to pressure grant recipients and organizations around the globe to sign revised contracts that included language derived from Trump’s executive orders cracking down on diversity programs — despite a federal judge’s order demanding that they halt doing just that. (Late last week, an appeals court sided with the Trump administration.)
Last month, a federal judge in Rhode Island stated that the Trump White House “had defied his order to release billions of dollars in federal grants, marking the first time a judge has expressly declared that the Trump administration is disobeying a judicial mandate,” according to The New York Times.
This month, Team Trump appears focused on amping up the volume.
Trending Stories
“The people in the administration [who are] deliberately violating a court order and instructing others to ignore it — that is criminal contempt of court and potential obstruction of justice,” Ken White, a criminal defense attorney and former federal prosecutor, told Rolling Stone last week. “It’s not just lawless; that would be a crime. But even if it is a crime, that doesn’t mean this Department of Justice is going to prosecute it. They’ve basically decided the Trump administration is above the law. Everybody is watching closely, looking for the Andrew Jackson moment, when they openly say they are going to defy the court. It seems as if they’re getting increasingly close to that line.”
Just days later, the Trump administration has reached that line and is prepared to blow right through it. The constitutional crisis is here.